In the Claws of the German Eagle Part 11

"For heaven's sake," he cried, "don't wake up those men!"

"Why?" I asked.

"Because this picture I'm taking here is to be labeled 'Dead Men in the Termonde Trenches,' and you would have them starting up as though the day of resurrection had arrived."

After taking these pictures we were ready to cross the bridge; but the two sentries posted at this end were not ready to let us. They were very small men, but very determined, and informed us that their instructions were to allow no one to pa.s.s over without a permit signed by the General. We produced scores of pa.s.ses and pa.s.sports decorated with stamps and seals and covered with myriad signatures. They looked these over and said that our papers were very nice and undoubtedly very numerous, but ungraciously insisted on that pa.s.s signed by the General.

So back we flew to the General at Grembergen. I waited outside until my companions emerged from the office waving pa.s.ses.

They were in a gleeful, bantering mood. That evening they apprised me of the fact that all day I had been traveling as a rich American with my private photographers securing pictures for the Belgian Relief Fund.

Leaving our automobile in charge of the chauffeur, we cautiously made our way over the bridge into the city of Termonde, or what was once Termonde, for it is difficult to dignify with the name of city a heap of battered buildings and crumbling brick--an ugly scar upon the landscape.

I was glad to enter the ruins with my companions instead of alone.

It was not so much fear of stray bullets from a lurking enemy as the suggestion of the spirits of the slain lingering round these tombs. For Termonde appeared like one vast tomb. As we first entered its sepulchral silences we were greatly relieved that the three specter-like beings who sat huddled up over a distant ruin turned out not to be ghosts, but natives hopelessly and pathetically surveying this wreck that was once called home, trying to rake out of the embers some sort of relic of the past.

A regiment of hungry dogs came prowling up the street, and, remembering the antics of the past week, they looked at us as if speculating what new species of crazy human being we were. To them the world of men must suddenly have gone quite insane, and if there had been an agitator among them he might well have asked his fellow-dogs why they had acknowledged a race of madmen as their masters. Indeed, one could almost detect a sense of surprise that we didn't use the photographic apparatus to commit some new outrage. They stayed with us for a while, but at the sight of our cinema man turning the crank like a machine gun, they turned and ran wildly down the street.

Emptied bottles looted from winecellars were strung along the curbs. To some Germans they had been more fatal than the Belgian bullets, for while one detachment of the German soldiers had been setting the city blazing with petrol from the petrol flasks, others had set their insides on fire with liquors from the wine flasks, and, rolling through the town in drunken orgy, they had fallen headlong into the ca.n.a.l.

There is a relevant item for those who seek further confirmation as to the reality of the atrocities in Belgium. If men could get so drunken and uncontrolled as to commit atrocities on themselves (i.e., self-destruction), it is reasonable to infer that they could commit atrocities on others--and they undoubtedly did. The surprise lies not in the number of such crimes, but the fewness of them.

Three boys who had somehow managed to crawl across the bridge were prodding about in the ca.n.a.ls with bamboo poles.

"What are you doing?" we inquired.

"Fis.h.i.+ng," they responded.

"What for?" we asked.

"Dead Germans," they replied.

"What do you do with them--bury them?"

"No!" they shouted derisively. "We just strip them of what they've got and shove 'em back in."

Their search for these hapless victims was not motivated by any sentimental reasons, but simply by their business interest as local dealers in helmets, b.u.t.tons and other German mementos.

We took pictures of these young water-ghouls; a picture of the Hotel de Ville, the calcined walls standing like a sh.e.l.l, the inside a smoking ma.s.s of debris; then a picture of a Belgian mitrailleuse car, manned by a crowd of young and jaunty dare-devils. It came swinging into the square, bringing a lot of bicycles from a German patrol which had just been mowed down outside the city. After taking a shot at an aeroplane buzzing away at a tremendous distance overhead, they were off again on another scouting trip.

I got separated from my party and was making my way alone when a sharp "h.e.l.lo!" ringing up the street, startled me. I turned to see, not one of the photographers, but a fully-armed, though somewhat diminutive, soldier in Belgian uniform waving his hand at me.

"h.e.l.lo!" he shouted; "are you an American?"

I could hardly believe my eyes or my ears, but managed to shout back, "Yes, yes, I'm an American. Are you?" I asked dubiously.

"You betcha I'm a 'Merican," he replied, coming quickly up to me. It was my turn again.

"What are you doing down here--fighting?" I put in fatuously.

"What the h.e.l.l you think I'm doing?" he rejoined.

I now felt quite sure that he was an American. Further offerings of similar "language of small variety but great strength" testified to his sojourn in the States.

"You betcha I'm a 'Merican," he reiterated, "though I was over there but two years. My name is August Bidden. I worked in a lumber-mill in Wagner, Wisconsin. Came back here to visit my family. The war broke out. I was a Reservist and joined my regiment. I'm here on scout-duty. Got to find out when the Germans come back into the city."

"Been in any battles?"

"You betcha," he replied.

"Kill any Germans?"

"You betcha."

"Did you enjoy it?"

"You betcha."

"Any around here now?"

"You betcha. A lot of them down in the bushes over the brook."

Then his eyes flashed a sudden fire as though an inspired idea had struck him. "There's no superior officer around," he exclaimed confidentially. "Come right down with me and you can take a pot- shot at the d.a.m.ned Boches with my rifle." He said it with the air of a man offering a rare treat to his best friend. I felt that it devolved on me to exhibit a proper zest for this little shooting-party and save my reputation without risking my skin. So I said eagerly:

"Now are you dead sure that the Germans are down there!"

implying that I couldn't afford any time unless the shooting was good.

"You betcha they're down there," was his disconcerting reply. "You can see their green-gray uniforms. I counted sixteen or seventeen of them."

The thought of that sixteen-to-one shot made my cheeks take on the color of the German uniforms. The naked truth was my last resort. It was the only thing that could prevent my zealous friend from dragging me forcibly down to the brookside. He may have heard the chattering of my teeth. At any rate he looked up and exclaimed, "What's the matter? You 'fraid?"

I replied without any hesitation, "You betcha."

The happy arrival of the photographer at this juncture, however, redeemed my fallen reputation; for a soldier is always peculiarly amenable to the charms of the camera and is even willing to quit fighting to get his picture taken.

This photograph happens to hit off our little episode exactly. It shows Ridden serene, smiling, confident, and my sort of evasive hangdog look as though, in popular parlance, I had just "got one put over me."

Then, while seated on a battered wall, Ridden poured out his story of the last two months of hards.h.i.+ps and horrors. It was the single individual's share in the terrific gruelling that the Belgian army had received while it was beaten back from the eastern frontier to its stand on the river Scheldt. Always being promised aid by the Allies if they would hold out just a little longer, they were led again and again frantically to pit their puny strength against the overwhelming tide out of the North. For the moment they would stay it. Eagerly they would listen for sounds of approaching help, asking every stranger when it was coming. It never came. From position to position they fell back, stubbornly fighting, a flaming pillar of sparks and clouds of smoke marking the path of their retreat.

Though smashed and broken that army was never crushed. Its spirit was incarnate in this cheerful and undaunted Ridden. He recounted his privations as nonchalantly as if it was just the way that he had planned to spend his holiday. As a farewell token he presented me with an epaulet from an officer he had killed, and a pin from a German woman spy he had captured.

"Be sure to visit me when you get back to America," I cried out down the street to him.

He stood waving his hand in farewell as in greeting, the same happy ingenuous look upon his face and sending after me in reply the same old confident standby, "You betcha." But I do not cherish a great hope of ever seeing Ridden again. The chances are that, like most of the Belgian army, he is no longer treading the gray streets of those demolished cities, but whatever golden streets there may be in the City Celestial. War is race suicide. It kills the best and leaves behind the undermuscled and the under-brained to propagate the species.

Striking farther into the heart of the ruins, we beheld in a section all burned and shattered to the ground a building which stood straight up like a cliff intact and undamaged amidst the general wreckage.

As we stumbled over the debris, imagine our surprise when an old lady of about seventy thrust her head out of a bas.e.m.e.nt window.

She was the owner of the house, and while the city had been the fighting ground for the armies she had, through it all, bravely stuck to her home.

"I was born here, I have always lived here, and I am going to die here," she said, with a look of pride upon her kindly face.